In a world of “Move fast and break things” it should come as no surprise that malpractice is rife in the project world. Executives are told to accept failure, and that’s exactly what they’re getting on a regular basis. In the IT world in particular, project failure rates are estimated at 68%.
The reality is that failure is not always an options. In the world of cybersecurity, for example, the operative word is “breach.” That is, the weakest link can break the chain, so a single failure is enough to undo all other efforts.
To use another analogy, certain projects can be on the critical path for a larger program (and that program can be on the critical path for the whole portfolio), so just one costly failure can hold up the rest of the organization from its vision. It’s common for the portfolio process to account for return and investment, but not for how critical a certain initiative is for all of its dependent projects.
Budgets are getting thinner as technology solutions are becoming bigger, pricier and more mandatory, leaving the margin for error razor thin. These stakes exist in increasingly complicated and ever-transforming environments.
Organizations are migrating to technologies that quickly become outmoded, products are going to market in a completely different climate from when they were designed, and AI is making some op-ed headlines about humankind’s place in its own labor market sound downright existential.
While all these fears are new, the underlying problems are just the same, dating back to Y2K or even all the way back to the Challenger disaster. When things go wrong, it’s not due to a lack of technical skills to (for example) put security in place. It’s the organization and planning to get the administrivia down to the minutia right.
Doing Projects Right Every Time
Successful projects are the result of the right plans done right. People naturally think of planning as the job for leaders and that execution is more technical. Organizations will often invest in the leadership to properly plan and the resources to do all the assigned tasks, but not enough in the leadership it takes to make sure every box is ticked. Execution suffers from a lack of project management bandwidth when project managers are running too many projects to conduct flawless execution. In order to get every last detail right, leaving no breaches and no margin of error, the leadership can’t slack after creating the baselines.
There needs to be enough strong leadership in place to ensure the technical resources are getting their homework done to the exact schedule, budget, and spec or there will be variances. When those variances go unnoticed, the scope creeps, and when there isn’t enough strong leadership to establish project control, the necessary adjustments aren’t made to save the project. Time-and-time again, we see this as the recipe for projects flying off the rails.
Equifax’s security debacle all resulted from one software engineer missing one patch on one piece of software. Investing more in technical talent to execute IT security is not the solution here, since any software engineer can update software. Investing more in planning is likely not the solution either, since software patches were likely already in the plan.
It’s the accountability and oversight that ensures the discipline of the plan is instilled throughout the lifecycle that ensures success. In order to get everything right, every time, on-time it comes down to project leadership.
Read our project leadership white paper to learn more about how to take charge and ensure success.
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